'Left of Black': Episode #28 featuring Rosa Clemente and 9th Wonder

Left of Black #28
w/ Rosa Clemente and 9th Wonder
March 21, 2011

Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined by Rosa Clemente (via Skype), the 2008 Green Party Vice-Presidential candidate in a conversation about the historic Green Party ticket in 2008, contemporary Black activism and Hip-Hop. Later Neal is joined in-studio by producer, label head and educator 9th Wonder (Patrick Douthit).

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→Rosa Alicia Clemente is a community organizer, journalist Hip Hop activist and the 2008 Vice-Presidential candidate with the Green Party. She has been a featured keynote speaker, panelist, and political commentator all over the United States. In 1995, she developed Know Thy Self Productions, a speaker’s bureau for young people of color.. Clemente is currently working on her first book, When A Puerto Rican Woman Ran For Vice-President and Nobody Knew Her Name and will begin pursuing her doctorate degree in Black Studies this upcoming fall.

→Patrick Douthit aka 9th Wonder is a Grammy Award winning music producer, who has worked with artists like Erykah Badu, Jay Z, David Banner, Destiny’s Child, Jean Grae, MURs and was a founding member of the group Little Brother. Douthit is currently the head on the Jamla Record label and It’s A Wonderful World Music Group (IWWMG). The Wonder Year, a film directed by Kenneth Price, featuring a year in the life of 9th Wonder will debut later this month at the RiverRun International Film Festival in his hometown of Winston-Salem. In the fall, he will co-teach the course “Sampling Soul” with Mark Anthony Neal at Duke University.

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Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

Barack the First Hip-Hop President?

from The Green Institute

"For me its not only about holding Obama, the House of Representatives, or the United States Senate accountable. Holding public officials accountable is important, but building a multi-racial social justice movement is a necessity for our very existence."

Why President Elect Barack Obama is not the first Hip Hop President
by Rosa A. Clemente

"Each generation out of relative obscurity, must discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it."-- Frantz Fanon

It has been 45 days since the Hip Hop generation helped usher in the first Black male President of the United States of America. Since that historic night, many within Hip Hop culture, like writer Greg Kot of the Boston Globe, entrepreneur Russell Simmons, artists Common, Jay-Z and P. Diddy, have declared President-Elect Obama the first Hip Hop president. In my humble opinion they are wrong, dead wrong. It does not matter how many Hip Hop pundits, non-profit organizations, and recognizable figures within the culture declare it. Much like an MC or B-Girl battle, I'm ready to challenge that declaration.

As a long time community organizer and Hip Hop activist and journalist, I have always followed a rule: never allow someone to become your priority while you become his or her option. For President Elect Barack Obama and the entire Democrat Party leadership in this country, the

Hip Hop generation has never been a priority, we have always been an option and that option is used mostly to get out the vote during elections. Efforts like Vote or Die, Generation Vote, Rock the Vote, Respect my Vote, do not empower a generation - they are catchy slogans emblazoned on pretty white tees that offer empty rhetoric. At the end of the day, those G.O.T.V. efforts become guaranteed votes for the Democratic Party and often fail to educate their followers about candidates that run outside of the two-party system.

I believe that like many before him, President-Elect Barack Obama's campaign used Hip Hop to create excitement amongst young people in this country, but we must clearly see through the $750 million bling-bling marketing haze of his campaign. The few times he was pressed on his association to Hip Hop, he spoke about offensive rap lyrics and Black men having respect for themselves by pulling up their pants. I do not recall one specific mention of the political victories and social consciousness brought out by millions in the culture. Just because you brush off your shoulders, fist bump the future First Lady, or play a mean game of street ball, that does not make you Hip Hop. What we have now is an Obama administration that came into power with the promise of change, but is remixing that promise by sampling from the Bill Clinton Presidency, including Hillary herself, and this new remix will do nothing to change the mass conditions of our people.

In Van Jones new book, The Green Collar Economy, Van says, "It is time to change from fighting against something to fighting for something." For me that statement encapsulates why I chose to accept Cynthia's McKinney's invitation to be her running mate and why the Green Party made history by choosing us as the first women-of-color ticket in American Presidential politics. I accepted the call because I was no longer interested in fighting against the Democratic or Republican Party.

Read the Full Essay @

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Rosa Clemente, former Green Party Vice-Presidential Candidate, and her daughter Alicia-Maria, live in North Carolina. This the first in a series of four articles commissioned for the Green Institute by Rosa Clemente.

Return of the SuperSheroes

from Vibe.com

CRITICAL NOIR
Labelle's Back to Now:
Soundtrack for an Historic Presidential Ticket
by Mark Anthony Neal

LaBelle, the groundbreaking 1970s trio comprised of Sarah Dash, Nona Hendryx, and Patti Labelle, literally had to be imagined. In earlier iterations as the Bluebelles and Patty Labelle & the Bluebells, the group had a solid following on the chitlin' circuit in the late 1960s. In an era that was dominated by Motown girls groups such as Martha and the Vandellas and of course The Supremes, there was little chance that the Bluebelles would ever emerge from under the long shadows cast by the Motown machine. In steps Vicki Wickham, erstwhile television producer-turned-music promoter and manager, who had initially come in contact with Dash, Hendryx and Labelle when the trio toured the UK. Wickham agreed to serve as the group's new manager after they were dropped by their label, with the caveat that the group shorten their name to simply LaBelle.

As Patti Labelle recalls in her autobiography Don't Block the Blessings, Wickham imagined a future for the group that was "bold, brash, brazen. It was going to be revolutionary" adding that the group's music was going to be "political, progressive, passionate...three black women singing about racism, sexism, and eroticism." What Wickham imagined was a future that was well before its time; the pop music world and the arguably the even more insular universe of Soul and R&B were not yet quite prepared for black women speaking directly to worldly and even more personal concerns, such as the pursuit of sexual pleasure--this in the years before the emergence black women writers such as Ntozake Shange, Gayl Jones, Alice Walker, and Michele Wallace as major figures. To their credit, and quite unlike the example set by kindred spirit Betty Davis, Dash, Hendryx and most famously Labelle continued to chart their own musical courses, even when they couldn't hold the group together in the aftermath of their greatest success, the million-seller "Lady Marmalade." Back to Now (Verve) represents the group's first studio recording since 1976.

Read Full Essay @

Hip-Hop for VP: Rosa Clemente Runs on the Green Party Ticket

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JULY 9th, 2008

Today Rosa A. Clemente released the following statement:

"I am honored and excited to accept this invitation to run with Cynthia McKinney. Cynthia McKinney is a hero to me and many others across this country and around the world for her courage in standing up to George Bush while the Democratic Party establishment caved.

"This campaign is the opportunity the Hip-Hop generation has been working for. This is our time to address the issues affecting our communities – rising unemployment, the high cost of food and housing, a lack of quality public education and access to higher education, the prison-industrial complex, and unaccountable corporate media. These issues are not being addressed by either the Republican or Democratic nominee.

"I choose to do this, not for me, but for my generation, my community and my daughter. I don't see the Green Party as an alternative; I see it as an imperative. I trust that my Vice Presidential run will inspire all people, but especially young people of color, to recognize that we have more then two choices. Together, we can build the future we've been wanting."

Hip-hop artist M1 says, "I've never voted in the Presidential election; I've never felt strongly enough about a candidate to. Knowing that Rosa Clemente is down with Cynthia McKinney's run, I feel that now is the greatest opportunity for the Hip-Hop community to put our collective strength and power to the test and vote for someone who represents who we are and what we stand for."

For more info visit:

rosaclemente.com

runcynthiarun.org


To schedule an interview, call 202-584-1021 or email
press-secretary@runcynthiarun.org

To book Rosa A. Clemente for an event, call 347-534-2994.